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[ccslider]

A major slide took out the main power transmission line that supplies the Telluride region Sunday evening. Details are still sketchy but it appears the slide wiped out a transmission pole and also buried the access road into the small adjacent community of Ophir under numerous piles of debris some in excess of 20 feet deep. The county road and bridge crews got a single lane punched through to Ophir late Monday evening.

There is a back up line from another power source but it is undersized to supply all the needs of the town, ski area and region. So the local power company cut power to the ski area and other non-essential users and is managing the load so that the back up line can provide power. They are pleading with local residents to reduce power consumption during the morning and evening peak load periods. A number of the large users have removed themselves from the grid and are operating on stand-by bakup power (co-generation). So far, rolling blackouts have not proved necessary, but this could change if the demands exceed the capacity of the line.

The ski area opened late Monday because the power outage also effected the communications tower without which ski areas cease to function. 8 of the 16 lifts can operate "normally" under auxiliary power so once the comm center was back up and running the ski area opened for business - good thing because another 9" of snow Sunday night (~ 3 feet storm total) has the conditions merely perfect.

During the slide event, only about half of the snowpack in the starting zone released so there is concern that any repair efforts are in danger of another slide. This could be mitigated by avi-control work, but the slide zone has historical run down into the town of Ophir where a few structures could be in jeopardy. The lawyers are still trying to sort out liablity issues if additional control work produced climax type results. So in the mean time, everyone is waiting, hoping that the main transmission line can be repaired soon.

This power incident will likely fuel heated debates about power line upgrades, already in the spotlight because Tri-State (power supplier) wanted to upgrade the backup line, predicting that this sort of incident would have this sort of impact. During the Environmental Assessment to determine the impacts of the upgrade, it was determined that visual impacts, where the upgraded line would cross mesa view corridors, could be mitigated by undergrounding the line. The County wants Tri-State to pick up the extra construction costs of undergrounding, and of course Tri-State doesn't want the extra costs.

[ccslider]

Here's a photo of the runout zone. The transmission line runs perpendicular to the slidepath just below the trees on the valley floor. The wind blast probably did most of the damage.

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